Fur, Fang & Phantom

Did Man tame the beast or lull it to sleep?

A couple of years ago, I came across this post on Pinterest. It was actually a Tumblr thread and somebody had saved part of it on Pinterest. It didn’t take me long to put together the rest. The writer of the post talked about this weird phenomenon of how supernatural beings might have just evolved as humans. This is a glimpse of what they wrote. Excuse me, I might be paraphrasing - “What if supernatural creatures did exist once, but through the years, they slowly mixed in with humans? You can see the blood of a fairy in the way a ballet dancer hovers mid-air, you can see the blood of a mermaid in the young girl who wades into every stream she sees on a hike, you can see the blood of a werewolf in that one friend who can always smell something wrong. The blood of supernaturals may have mostly faded away. But if you look closely, you can still see it.”

I read this and thought of the actress Tilda Swinton. I didn’t doubt that analogy anymore. And when I say I thought this random person on the internet might be my soulmate, I am not kidding. Anyway, it made me wonder, if humans evolving from supernatural beings feels too far-fetched for some, what if we allow the possibility of us evolving from animals? Obviously man is an animal in a larger sense but I’m not just talking about Apes. I’m talking about primal Fauna.

Even on Instagram and such, one comes across posts of humans having animal-like features. I got introduced to it when the hit TV show Bear was the talk of the town. The main lead, Jeremy Allen White, secured himself the term “hot rodent boyfriend” alongside Timothy Chalamet, Matty Healy, Barry Keoghan and so many more famous faces. “Hot rodent boyfriend is, essentially, I want to say, like a hot guy, but he kind of looks like an insect. He's skinny, scrawny, a little weird-looking, but hot, kind of grimy for lack of a better word, a little slick,”  is how a TikTok user defined the term. You also see female models being compared to foxes, deer, rabbits and what not. Then there’s golden-retriever boyfriends, black-cat girlfriends and the list goes on. At first, I was like, I don’t see it. What do they mean? But then, I felt like it’s more about the aura that they embody than anything else. But if that comes with a complementary physical feature, then jackpot! Take someone who has big bulging eyes, they naturally come across as very wise and observant, like an Owl. Or people who are so anxious, they always appear to have a deer-like vigilance. Not to mention the shape-shifting aspect. 

You can see this ideology spread across fiction too. A classic example would be Harry Potter. All the students at Hogwarts are categorized based on their characteristics into the 4 houses, all represented by different animals. You know someone was put in slytherin because of their sly nature. In the movie Black Swan, the main character’s attributes are compared to a white swan initially when she is innocent, vulnerable and pure. After transformation though, she dons the identity of a black swan capturing her dark and tainted nature. We also have our superheroes like Batman, Spiderman, Antman and I think you get the gist. 

At the risk of sounding narrow-minded, I’ll say, I do like categorizing stuff so I very much enjoy these human-animal archetypes. But why do we crave archetypes anyway? Why are we grouping ourselves with fellow creatures who have the same qualities? Maybe it’s because we have this innate need to find our pack, our tribe. After all, we are social animals. And maybe it is difficult to do that on a human level. If one has to fit in somewhere, he needs to put in a lot of effort. Be cautious, a little bit of pretence here and there. But on a feral level? One flick of the eye, one loyal howl and you’re in. The question remains, are you prey or are you predator?

Images from: Pinterest